AMA releases inaugural health care report card

By Lethbridge Herald on July 5, 2025.

Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald

The Alberta Medical Association on Friday released its inaugural report card on the state of health care in the province and it suggests that access is a serious concern.

AMA president Dr. Shelley Duggan said the report provides an overview of what patients are experiencing across the health care system.

Data was drawn from formal general population survey research and supplemented with insights from the AMA’s PatientFirst.ca community which has 65,000 members.

Addressing health care professionals, Duggan said in a release that “despite ongoing system strain, your commitment to providing the best care that you can has been noticed. Albertans gave high marks to both family medicine and acute care specialists along with our health team colleagues. If you’ve ever wondered whether you make a difference—this survey offers a resounding yes.”

The report shows that only 54 per cent of Albertans who have a family doctor can usually get an appointment when they need one.

“The 2023 Modernizing Alberta’s Primary Health Care System report found just 40 per cent can get same – or next-day access to primary care — a figure that has declined over five years. The trend is slowly improving, but we must stabilize family practices before we see meaningful gains. In acute care, 44% saw a specialist in the past year, but 42 per cent rated the wait for an appointment as poor while 19 per cent are currently on a specialist wait list,” said Duggan.

Walk-in clinics are essential in Alberta with limited access to family doctors, according to the report.

“While comprehensive, longitudinal care yields better outcomes and lower costs, episodic care continues to fill critical gaps. If we must continue to rely on them – or on new urgent care center models – we must also address systemic issues. We will have to ensure physicians working in these models have the time, resourcing, system connectivity and flexible compensation to support long-term sustainability and reduce care variation,” Duggan added.

The rising use of emergency departments is also a concern with 27 per cent of Albertans visiting one last year – many of those visits by unattached patients.

The report states 18 per cent of adult Albertans don’t have a family doctor, 10 per cent are actively seeking one and four per cent use walk-in clinics as their primary care option.

It also notes that while hospital and acute specialty care is considered excellent, 42 per cent of those waiting to see a specialist considered the wait poor.  

“The Canadian Institute for Health Information estimates that 15 per cent of Canadian ED visits are non-urgent. Here in Alberta, with primary care access limited and the additional load of a current public health crisis, patients are left waiting for care. It’s concerning to see that 18 per cent of Alberta-registered patients left the ED without being seen — more than double the national average of 8.6 per cent (CIHI),” said Duggan. 

An executive summary of the report states that 90 per cent of Alberta adults used health care services in the last year. Of those, 75 per cent were satisfied with their most recent care while 83 per cent rated visits to their family doctors as very good or excellent.

“Yet beneath these strong satisfaction ratings lies a persistent story of strain and unmet needs. Nearly one-in-five Albertans do not have a regular family doctor and difficulties in securing timely appointments are widespread, with just over 54 per cent able to see their family physician when needed. For those without a family doctor, reliance on walk-in clinics and emergency departments is common, driving up wait times and placing additional pressure on acute care settings,” states the summary. 

Of ER visitors, 58 per cent rate timeliness as poor and 42 per cent of acute care specialist patients say waits are unsatisfactory.

“Issues of access and wait times are indeed common concerns across all aspects of the health care system. Difficulties securing family doctor appointments, serious queuing/wait- time issues in emergency departments and significant barriers to accessing specialist care present similar challenges in different contexts,” states the summary.

The online survey was conduced between May 28 and June 3 with a sample size of 1,120. 

“A random stratified sample of panelists was invited to complete the survey from panel partners. The data were weighted to reflectthe gender, age and regional composition of Alberta’s population according to Statistics Canada,” says the report. The margin for error for a comparable probability-based random sample of that size is +/- 2.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.